Someone on EJ also made the reflexion that tying even more buffs to NG is gonna make the difference between static and movement fights even bigger for moonkins, given that it makes you rely even more on the best NG uptime possible. It would be nice to see something to adress movement dps in the next few ptr builds honestly.

This may be getting slightly off topic, but before you complain about moonkin movement dps try to remember that as tiers and item level increases, so do stats. It's no secret the best moonkin dps while moving comes from starsurge procs and what do you think happens as we gain more and more crit from our gear? More starsurge procs. Moonkin movement dps truly isn't that bad as is; it only takes some foresight so that you aren't caught outside of an eclipse. But as we get our dots critting more and possibly ticking more with more achievable breakpoints and the chance at starsurge procs remaining the same, it only gets better for us. Realize that Blizzard designs expansions knowing the full extent of item levels and thus what may be poorly balanced one tier catches up and then surpasses in another and it's Blizzards job to make sure they don't buff things too strong initially to then let them get out of hand later and nerf them. You'd probably complain even more if they buffed our movement dps now to then have to nerf it in two tiers after stats catch us up.

This may be getting slightly off topic, but before you complain about moonkin movement dps try to remember that as tiers and item level increases, so do stats. It's no secret the best moonkin dps while moving comes from starsurge procs and what do you think happens as we gain more and more crit from our gear? More starsurge procs. Moonkin movement dps truly isn't that bad as is; it only takes some foresight so that you aren't caught outside of an eclipse. But as we get our dots critting more and possibly ticking more with more achievable breakpoints and the chance at starsurge procs remaining the same, it only gets better for us. Realize that Blizzard designs expansions knowing the full extent of item levels and thus what may be poorly balanced one tier catches up and then surpasses in another and it's Blizzards job to make sure they don't buff things too strong initially to then let them get out of hand later and nerf them. You'd probably complain even more if they buffed our movement dps now to then have to nerf it in two tiers after stats catch us up.

No I wouldn't complain, because that would be fair, and they have done that many times for other classes that scaled too well between tiers. Frankly I'd prefer having a consistent mediocre movement dps for the whole expansion, instead of it going from terrible to great from tier to tier. I doesn't even have to be good, since it's supposed to be one of our weaknesses, just not completely based on rng.

Like you said, the rng factor is gonna go down as we gain crit, because of ss procs. And honestly I'm even afraid it'll make us too good, because one of our main weaknesses will be erased by the last tier. I'm picturing those times when you get several ss procs in a row and you just unload an insane amount of dps, even on the move; and that is just too good not to be nerfed (like ss procs going from 30% to 15%). And then we'll be back to the current state.

Originally Posted by Lightfist

I don't really get how Bloodlust fits Shamans...

"I need to calm the elements, and through our sacred bond we will - wait, is that a fucking boss? I'M SO FUCKING ANGRY! I'M GOING TO KILL HIM! NO, WAIT! I'M GOING TO RAPE HIM THEN KILL HIM! WITH SPOONS! RAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGEEEEEEEEEEE!"

Why? Hunters lose like 0 DPS on the move and blizz don't give a crap they're too good at that. Almost all casters nowadays have great CD's that let them cast on the move, which helps tremendously. I don't see why boomkins should be behind everyone in that department. I mean, it's not like we're super great at something else to compensate that with laughable DPS on the move.

Why? Hunters lose like 0 DPS on the move and blizz don't give a crap they're too good at that. Almost all casters nowadays have great CD's that let them cast on the move, which helps tremendously. I don't see why boomkins should be behind everyone in that department. I mean, it's not like we're super great at something else to compensate that with laughable DPS on the move.

We are great when it comes to multi target fights and honestly the critical strike increase is a nice way to make up for our lack of effective movement spells.

On paper the 2 piece maths out to around a 2% increase and the 4 piece maths out to around a 4% increase. Both are pretty standard and we have had much, much worse set bonusese in the past.

Now the 4% increase from the 4 piece is on a pure single target fight without insane movment considered, thus ~95% uptime on NG is realistic. Fights where multidotting/AoEing is preferred will obviously devalue this bonus slightly (or by a lot if it's a fight like WLM and you are just spam Hurricaning in the beginning).

^this.

In my opinion you guys missread the ptr-notes and missunderstand in which direction blizzard wants us owlkin to move..

At the moment in 5.1. we are currently extremely (if not overpowered) bursty at the start of a fight. After that we are super luck-dependet to get again (after 3 mins) the chance to stand still, burst the hell out of us besides the fact that it is exclusively hard to time lunar with the cds..

So for now: this is the only way to play boomkin on a decent level.

Blizzards wants to change that with buffing sotf (imo besides the fact that it is only one cast less in sola - think of the more starfalls), lowering burst-potential by a few percent so that we get A CHOICE, which way we want to play owlkin. And i think this plan sounds good theorytical and myb practical aswell? We will see.

If we get roundabout 2-4% for each piece bonus then in my opinion this is fine aswell too ;-) + the higher itemlvl will this work like every tier-set.

Nothing to complain about and dont cry about the "the weak owlkin" we are making fine and think blizzards does fine atleast with boomys with a few exceptions like mushrooms and solar-singletarget-dmg..

And so are pretty much all DOT-based specs in this game. That's not something exclusive to boomkins.

Except that we have 0 control over it.

Of course we are not the only DoT-based spec who can perform well on multi target fights but surely we can out-perform several classes.

And you're right about the fact that we dont have any control on RNG, we aren't on the same level of Elemental Shamans (Spiritwalker's Grace + Glyph of Lightning Bolt are great) or Hunters or Warlocks (thanks to KJC) but we can rely on Lunar Shower and Shrooms for short movement and if you consider the possible Starsurge procs we aren't in the worst position among ranged classes after all.

EDIT - Anyway I'm not saying I'm a fan of these bonuses, I would really like a spell like Scorch that could increment our lunar/solar power by +10 or any other way to keep casting while in movement but that's all we can do at the moment.

Except that nature's grace is one of our biggest problems currently. Both have been mentioned but I'll put it one post. Movement AND aoe are way too dependent on nature's grace. If anything this bonus should be a bit bigger, or something else has got to give. So our bonus is useless if we have to camp solar for aoe... I guess it is kinda balanced but if they're balancing it purely for single target fights our already weak movement and aoe dps will suffer even more. Maybe that's ok.. I dunno, not every class/spec has to excel at everything I suppose.

Next subject: I don't really understand nature's vigil nerf. If you're talking about burst in pvp, a lot of classes do it better and with zero casting... basically all melee have incredible uptime on us as well as ridiculous burst that we can't really stop, whereas our burst is based on procs and casting (the dots themselves don't do all that much even with CA and lunar shower spam, at least it does not equal to their instants) Warlocks also do ridiculous burst without needing to cast and so do mages (most take nether tempest and spam brain freeze procs and have protection for casting frostbolt with instant roots). Shadow priests have insane self peels and defenses... The list goes on...

In pve if we're talking about burst, bm hunters and arcane mages (two specs that come to mind, I'm sure there are others) can equal or pass our so called overpowered burst and then sustain better than us as well and have better movement aoe. We don't have to be stronger than them, but I'm just pointing out that our burst is not broken atm. If it's only being nerfed because of feral pvp then that's a bad way to nerf it imo. Nerfing feral cooldown stacking, maybe with berserk not stacking with nv/incarnation would be a possible solution, either that or change berserk itself or something in feral spec maybe even ravage... This is still assuming it's being nerfed because of feral tho, and unfortunately we haven't gotten any replies about why this is being nerfed for us. I have made too many posts trying to find out and I am a little too discouraged to try again.

Anyway, maybe things will be shifting to SotF/HotW, but why not make both viable? It would be nice to have more than one play style and this works pretty nicely and has its own strengths and weaknesses. I'm gonna try the ptr tomorrow and get some actual experience with the NV nerf and SotF (small) buff.

Why? Hunters lose like 0 DPS on the move and blizz don't give a crap they're too good at that. Almost all casters nowadays have great CD's that let them cast on the move, which helps tremendously. I don't see why boomkins should be behind everyone in that department. I mean, it's not like we're super great at something else to compensate that with laughable DPS on the move.

Because they are hunters, not casters. Yes, apples and oranges are different. No, i don't see a problem with that.
Almost all casters have to much movement DPS, and i wouldn't be surprised if they eventually lose it. I just don't see it happening in 5.x.

If I recall correctly they stated they intended the first tier to have 'easy' setbonuses because people had to relearn parts of the class already. We're now at the second tier and bonuses are even duller than in T14. Also the starfire buff again makes lunar eclipse that much more better than solar for singletarget. My mistake, can't read, still:
Not pleased.

If I recall correctly they stated they intended the first tier to have 'easy' setbonuses because people had to relearn parts of the class already. We're now at the second tier and bonuses are even duller than in T14. Also the starfire buff again makes lunar eclipse that much more better than solar for singletarget.
Not pleased.

Starfire buff, huh?

---------- Post added 2013-01-11 at 11:17 AM ----------

Originally Posted by Purrberry

This may be getting slightly off topic, but before you complain about moonkin movement dps try to remember that as tiers and item level increases, so do stats. It's no secret the best moonkin dps while moving comes from starsurge procs and what do you think happens as we gain more and more crit from our gear? More starsurge procs. Moonkin movement dps truly isn't that bad as is; it only takes some foresight so that you aren't caught outside of an eclipse. But as we get our dots critting more and possibly ticking more with more achievable breakpoints and the chance at starsurge procs remaining the same, it only gets better for us. Realize that Blizzard designs expansions knowing the full extent of item levels and thus what may be poorly balanced one tier catches up and then surpasses in another and it's Blizzards job to make sure they don't buff things too strong initially to then let them get out of hand later and nerf them. You'd probably complain even more if they buffed our movement dps now to then have to nerf it in two tiers after stats catch us up.

SS procs were never designed with the intent to provide some way to DPS on the move, that is what Lunar Shower was designed to do. In the next tier you can expect our Crit chance to increase by maybe 8-9% in full BiS (a lot depends on if they allow upgrading again). Remember it's only a 30% chance for a SS proc on every dot crit so, you really like your chances of the increased # of SS procs to occur during movement? And we can somewhat handcuff ourselves becasue if we get a SS proc when we know we will be moving shortly, we hold the proc and eat any potential new SS procs, thus basically wasting a cast. As well as if we are moving during Solar Eclipse after we have already used 1 SS in the Eclipse, if we use a SS proc it will be better DPS than Lunar Shower of course, but we have now costs ourselves one Eclipsed cast as well as lengthed the post Eclipse cycle by one cast after we are done moving.

Movement DPS will be microscopically better than it was this tier, and even smaller the final tier (the value of Crit will go down as you get more and more, Int gems will be used instead of Crit gems). It's not going to be anything close to the Sucks > Balanced > Overpowered pattern that you describe for tier by tier.

I think the SS proc will need to be modified because it's definitely not scaling fine with crit and multi target fights. I could see an improvement by adding a charge to the proc in order to not lose any.

In my recent Empress kill which is a heavy multi dot fight, i casted 130 starsurges but got 191 SS proc. This is something i wanted to check before the fight so i was focusing mainly on using my SS proc ASAP and try not to lose any.

How is this going to be in T15 and T16 once i'll have more crit? It might be fine for single target fight but SS proc scale poorly once you add more mobs to dot because you are just not able to use them all.

Somehow if we could have charges tied to the SS proc them it might solve this issue, it might even solve the movement part since we will be able to hold on the charges if we know we'll have to movement shortly.

I don't really know how many charges would be "balance" but it's definitely something that would help i think

Blizz should just make SotF lengthen our eclipse by one cast/reduce our number outside eclipse by the same amount instead of just skipping part of the non-eclipse. That might add some more appeal to a pretty crappy talent.